Well. Let me just say: we are not that annoying super-environmentalist couple who exist on filtered air and sprouts and live in a yurt (ok, we would love a yurt, actually). We consume plenty, we waste things, we splurge, we cheat--I mean, I bought disposable razors not too long ago which is pretty much indefensible no matter what angle you take.
Disposable stuff--in general--I am working hard to avoid, and while we have yet (I feel) to adequately address the amount of plastic that flows through our household, we have definitely made some improvements in the realm of paper consumption. We use paper plates if we have more guests than china, but otherwise we use our dishes and wash our cotton napkins regularly. We have hankies, and we are determined to start using them some day. :) We recycle or re-purpose our junk mail, get our news online, reuse paper for notes and lists, buy recycled TP (from Trader Joe's where it isn't as wretchedly expensive), and very rarely print anything. I can't do electronic books yet. I just can't. But I make use of the library ad nauseum and buy used books online if we need to own them.
However, I think the biggest change that we've made in regard to paper is a complete eradication of paper towels. Really. Haven't bought them since we ran out sometime last fall.
And this has been a bit of an adventure, this paper towel-less life. We have cats. They puke, they have hairballs. It is disgusting. I'm certainly not touching that stuff, so how to clean it without a nice wad of paper towels that can be immediately trashed? We also like bacon--and we like it cooked crispy and drained well. I've never, in my life, drained bacon on anything other than a paper towel. Hmmmm. What to do? And what about: cleaning windows, mopping up spills, cleaning sticky kid's hands and faces?
Well, the answer is--truly--simple. Your grandma knew it, I guarantee. Rags. Old cotton t-shirts, faded bath towels and washcloths, cloth diapers, microfiber cloths. Here's the real news flash: they are washable. Really, they get clean again! We (as I chronically complain) have been thoroughly bamboozled by advertising--there are few things in this world that are so gross/dirty/germy that you need to throw away whatever touches them, and hopefully you are never using any of those scary things in your house anyway.So, I have a few squares of old t-shirt that we use to drain bacon. I suds one up with dishwashing soap (which is best on grease) after we use it, rinse it out in hot water, and let it dry. When we knock over a wine glass or spill some water, I grab one of our old towels. The toilet gets cleaned either with sponges no longer good for dish-washing or old rags that I rinse with soapy water prior to laundering with everything else. There is typicallly a small pile of used rags and towels on my dryer, waiting for the next laundry day. If they are really gross, I use hot water to wash them and make sure they dry in the sun, which is a fantastic (free) disinfectant and bleaching agent.
Cat puke is still where I draw the line; I suppose I could take the dirty rag outside and hose off the worst of it, but instead, I just use whatever junk mail is handy to scoop it up and into the trash. Then I clean the spot with a rag and put it in the wash pile.
For something that seems so ubiquitous in our daily lives, it is comforting to me to find it fairly easy to adjust to a world without paper towels. I know that this is a small thing, but in some ways it seems spectacularly indicative of the many ways that we casually throw away precious things. I would never look at a tree and think: I should cut that down so that I can use the pulp to clean up cat puke.
And if you think no-paper-towels is weird, take a look at my new cotton balls! So nice to freshen my skin with a little witchhazel without throwing something away at the end. Heh heh heh.
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